Martín Berasategui is all about perfection, which is transformed into delight and exquisiteness, here. Every dish rimes with titanic intellectual and practical work. With exhaustive dishes that require deep reflection and incredible practical development. The dedication that is behind each proposal and the way it is executed –harmonizing flavours, textures, colours and infinite sensations to build a poetic unity– ¬is really admirable. The guest feels here and there touched, moved, and can’t but quiver in front of such an erudition and accomplishment. A masterly work that took him to world-wide consecration and to the total respect of the most significant experts and gourmets. Martín is admired as very few cooks and loved like no other. His restaurant is a school of life and of culinary art that has trained thousands of young cooks.
Berasategui represents excellence and perfect career. This is why the following historical dishes must always be part of the ideal menu: caramelized millefeuille of smoked eel and foie gras; basil noodles with their little pearls, served like a risotto with its emulsion; vegetable marrow salad with seafood; apple jelly with sautéed tubers, celeriac, Jerusalem artichoke and salsifies, salsify ice-cream and mustard sandwich; organic egg with beet, liquid herbs salad and stew carpaccio, to quote only a few of them. And don’t forget about the latest clairvoyant ideas the chef offered last year –one of his very best– especially the following archangelic constructions: Gillardeau oyster with cucumber, acid fruit, kefir and coconut; a show of nuances based on the exquisiteness of this eminent product. Or the seaweed cottage cheese with translucent crayfish consommé, mussels and crayfish; a deep breath of fresh air from the sea that has been extremely subtly refined. And what about the beet buds with smoked salmon cheeks, synonymous with alchemy and perfectly harmonized techniques. The red mullets with edible scale crystals, Iberian pork tail, and seaweed salad with dried fruit rime with exuberance and exquisiteness. Two qualities that are also expressed through the grilled sole served with its toasted skin over minced oyster and seaweed, smoked salmon cheeks and hot pepper spherifications. As well as through the roasted pigeon accompanied with fresh pasta covered with mushrooms, hints of truffle cream and sliced mushrooms. The very best lamb brains that have ever been cooked deserve the summa cum laude: impregnated with bread and parsley, hardly sautéed and lain over chard chlorophyll, together with cheese chocolates. Don’t leave the place without tasting the best restaurant desserts in the world: chocolate and honey pie with Irish coffee ice-cream; cold essence of basil and mange-tout with lime sorbet and iced juniper juice; and almond soufflé with honey ice-cream covered with dried fruit…